A Life in Exile: Reading Ferðasaga Árna Magnússonar as Global Biography

This article examines Ferðasaga Árna Magnússonar, a travel narrative written by Árni Magnússon from Geitastekkur—the first Icelander to travel to China in the eighteenth century—as a source for global microhistory. Using the micro-spatial approach of investigating systems of trade connecting Europe, Asia, and Africa through biographical accounts such as Ferðasaga, Árni’s life is used to explore the functioning of the two Danish–Norwegian monopoly trading companies for which he laboured: Det almindelige Handelskompagni in Greenland and the Danish Asiatisk Compagni on his voyage to China in 1759–61. The analysis shows that both of these state companies were sites of frequent acts of small-scale rebellion on the part of sailors and labourers, and that these rebellions were rarely brought to legal authorities, as long as they remained below the level of outright mutiny. In fact, sailors had a way of establishing their own sense of justice onboard ships—for example, in one incident on the return to Copenhagen from China by throwing overboard a sailor who was a known informant to the captain and pretending that he had accidently fallen. Although Árni and other sailors were very critical of state monopoly companies and the conditions of their labour, these monopoly companies and the opportunities for travel which they provided gave men of Árni’s class the opportunity to forge their own identities and to self-fashion in ways that have been mostly recognized in the upper classes by historians. This article argues that the global early modern world extended that ability to ordinary men, and that the expanding state, while repressive in many of its aspects, also offered the opportunity to escape its justice and oversight. Ships were locations where the captain, nominally an absolute monarch of his realm, was in reality dependent on the good will of the crew for the success of his voyage. Every port offered sailors opportunities to escape overly harsh discipline by deserting, and Ferðasaga recounts several such stories. Using Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s work on travelers in the Mughal Empire, the article follows Árni through three “life modes” of travel and survival: that of prisoner, trickster, and storyteller. In each of these modes, Árni and others like him learned skills which helped to transform their identities and facilitate their travel. After his career as a sailor and soldier were over, Árni worked as a schoolteacher in Jutland for seventeen years. In this phase of his life, the “storytelling” phase, the educational laws and schools established by the Danish–Norwegian church and state helped him to remake his identity yet again. Thus, both at home and abroad, ordinary men were able to use the state which attempted to control and regulate them to actually gain more social mobility. In this stage of life, Árni transforms himself from a wounded former soldier and town drunk into a respected member of the community. He works as a schoolteacher in Sweden and Norway before returning to Iceland in 1797, at which time he writes the manuscript of Ferðasaga. This manuscript of the adventures of a soldier, sailor, and schoolteacher in Europe can stand for many such ordinary men who shared Árni’s experiences, opinions, and inclinations towards resistance of authority, but were not able to write such extensive accounts.